Enjoy!
1. The Google Docs Add-on "Speech Recognition" allows a Google Docs user to speak into the computer's microphone (built in one is fine on our teacher laptops) and have those words turned into the text of the Google Doc. This may be best suited for notes OR for having your students work on their punctuation/grammar skills as the resulting text has words but not proper formatting. As a reminder, installing an Add-ons is a one-time-only event... within any Doc click on Add-ons and Get add-ons. After the first install that add-on is available in every Google Doc in that Google account.
2. Check out the templates in the Google Drive Template Gallery (https://drive.google.com/templates) next time you are starting a document from scratch. Using these templates may help save you time or inspire you to choose to try Google over your Microsoft Office standby. Here is one I challenge those that still make calendars in Publisher to try: https://drive.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0Au4TNSVpW0jndFNBLWNhaHBpMm9ybXZFQ256RUt6b1E&mode=public.
Bonus Tip ~ For Google Classroom (https://classroom.google.com/) users...
"Share to Classroom" is a Chrome browser extension that some of you may find useful if you are using Google Classroom. You do not need to have everyone in your Google Classroom feed at the moment; the students just need to be enrolled in one of your Google classroom classes, have the Chrome browser open, and be logged into that browser (automatic on Chromebooks, requires logging into settings on non-Chromebooks). All students in the building have this extension up and running in the browser (extensions can be pushed out to all students if you ever find one that would be great for our students); the adults in the building will have to go through the one time installation from the Chrome Web Store.
So once installed, here is how it works... I find a website I want my students to see. I pull it up in my Chrome browser and click on the "Share to Classroom" icon in the top right corner of my screen. I will be asked which class I want to share it with. As soon as I pick one, all the students in that Google Classroom who have the Chrome browser open will have their browser automatically go to that website. Students can share sites to teachers as well, however, when students share, the teacher gets notified but the website does not pop up automatically ~ no need to panic that the projected website will not be an ideal one.
Contact your ITRT with questions! Have a great day!
